The Importance Of Phone Etiquette – A Review Of Scream Factory’s The Incredible Melting Man Blu-Ray

The Incredible Melting Man is a bad movie. Let us just get that out of the way up front. I own the majority of Scream Factory titles that have been released on Blu Ray. I refuse to purchase Dead Souls, because if Shout Factory’s release of Remains taught me anything, it’s that any movie produced for Chiller TV, is not a movie I wish to put inside of me. Every one of Scream Factory’s releases(Dead Souls not included) have arguably been some of the genre’s best, classic titles. This is not one of them. There may have been four or five of you out there, clamoring for a high definition home video release of this movie, but I would wager to say that, most consumers of Scream Factory titles, really don’t care that much. However, I can’t fault a company such as Shout/Scream, for having a diverse catalog of titles, though.

The story opens as a group of astronauts, orbit in space near Saturn. After we are shown some stock footage of a sunburst, we are led to believe that bad things have happened, due the the blood running out of the central character’s nose. Skip forward a bit, and said character is the sole survivor of said shuttle expedition(how he got home? Who knows.), and is being treated in the hospital for massive radiation exposure. It’s clear that the military wishes to keep this incident a secret, so when the radiated man escapes the hospital, killing a nurse along the way, the hunt begins to bring him back in, before he can harm more people. And, also, the man in charge, General Perry, has terrible phone etiquette.

If you’ve been following along with the Scream Factory releases, you pretty much know what to expect by now. The transfer, for what this film is, looks great. My only complaint has nothing to do with the print itself, and more with the photography. Some of the outdoor scenes, the camera bobs up and down so frequently, that it made my eyeballs feel like I was having some sort of stroke. The DTS-HD Master Audio track is excellent, but this isn’t exactly a title that shakes the walls, if you know what I mean. This title isn’t quite as packed with special features as most Scream Factory titles are. Which, is probably due to the fact that so little exists for this movie in that regard. There is a director’s commentary, as well as an interview with Rick Baker, and Greg Cannom along with the director, William Sachs. And of course, the theatrical trailer.

If you’re a fan of this film, this is likely the best you’re ever going to get, as far as home video releases go. The picture and sound are great, and whatever extra features that could be dug up are on the disc. Even if you’re not a fan, and you’re like me, it’s worth the price just to have this as part of your scream factory collection. If anything, you get to see some early special effects work by Rick Baker in glorious HD. This might not be one of the best titles to be released under the brand, but it certainly continues the line of quality. Scream Factory’s Blu Ray release of The Incredible Melting Man will be available on July 30th, along with their other July release, of a little film called John Carpenter’s The Fog, which will also be reviewed in the immediate future.